Qualicom Launches Global Outsourcing Development Centre in Asia

Toronto - 1 Jun 2007: In 2007, Qualicom Innovations expanded its services into the US and Asia Pacific with the new Outsourcing Development Centre in Hong Kong. “We see tremendous potential in leveraging our proven North American project management experience with our talented employees in Asia,” said Bill Chan, President of Qualicom. “The result is quality work that produces a cost savings of 20%-40% for our clients.”

Qualicom’s outsourcing services provide all aspects of North American front-end project management support, requirements gathering, validation, user-centered design methodology, architecture design and the QRUP development process, to ensure the highest standard is achieved through proven processes and constant communication. The Asian Development Centre is responsible for coding, testing and quality assurance, managed by experienced international consultants and project managers.

Qualicom Global Outsourcing Centre can help North American firms reach their Asian clients through product localization, content translation, maintenance and support. Companies eyeing a growing but unfamiliar market can utilize Qualicom’s expertise in Asia to execute a product transition with reliability and low cost.

By using the latest technologies — mobile applications, point-of-sales software, e-Commerce engines, payment gateways, consumer portals — and ensuring that the technologies are appropriate to each clients’ business needs, Qualicom delivers superior outsourcing services in system integration, automated testing, business process re-engineering, QRUP implementation and documentation.

For more information, please call 416.492.3833 or contact us.

Qualicom Participates in IBM’s Retail Store Solutions Sales Summit (RS4)

Miami - 18 May 2007: Qualicom Innovations joined IBM’s Retail Store Solutions group for the Retail Store Solution Sales Summit (RS4) in Miami, for three days of networking and education to plan for the upcoming retail roadmap. “We are excited about our on-going partnership with IBM and plan to work at greater length to bring proven and valuable retail solutions to our clients,” said David Mok, Vice President of Qualicom Retail Solutions Group.

Qualicom’s flagship product – Retail-IT – is a powerful store management tool designed for medium to large retailers. The solution includes an enterprise server and store servers capable of transmitting real-time data to the head-office database.

Retail-IT clients enjoy the ability to analyze sales figures from any of their stores, in real-time. The solution gives tremendous flexibility for executives to study reports, plan strategies and review promotion results.

In the near future, an integrated solution based on the current successful model of Retail-IT will be launched. As always, Qualicom strives to provide the best tools for retailers and to be their winning partner in retail technology.

Qualicom Expands to US with CTIA Presence

Orlando - 27 Mar 2007: Qualicom Innovations is capturing the US market’s attention with its latest cellular-specific, point-of-sale management application which was launched at the CTIA wireless show in March 2007.

Retail-IT, Qualicom’s third generation store-management solution, is designed specifically for cellular phone and electronics retailers. It fulfills market demands for commission calculations, promotions and staff management, among its other tailor-made features. With the North American cellular market steadily expanding in the past three years, having a customized retail management solution has become a factor in driving a retailer's success.

Retail-IT’s tiered commissions allow the creation of plans by points or by number of sales, motivating employees to push through to the next bonus level. Another benefit is the centralized commission-sales reporting. Managers can review employees’ earnings in real-time by store or country-wide, and differentiate commissioned items from accessories or activations.

While many retailers struggle to set up promotional campaigns and launch them on time at the store level, Retail-IT’s flexible, easy-to-set up, and reusable promotion templates allow instant campaign activations simultaneously across all stores.

Proof of the software’s effectiveness, speed, and reliability is confirmed by the leaps in sales and business expansion experienced by the US retailers who are using Retail-IT; thus allowing them to devote their energies to engaging their customers.

Qualicom wins award in Canadian Business Press Best Website category

Toronto, Ontario – 5 June 2006: Qualicom Innovations received a Top 5 award in the Best Website category (N1) –, sponsored by Ironstone Media Corporation. The award was conferred for Qualicom’s ongoing implementation of the Web site for Style Magazine, Style.ca. Natalya Romashkin, Qualicom’s Webmaster, is responsible for this project.

Written for retailers, vendors, designers and students of womens- and mens-wear, Style is the source for seasonal apparel trends; the best of the world's runways; what's hot at the textile mills; how to make sense of the global marketplace; the newest merchandising solutions; and the warp-speed pace of technological change. For more than 100 years, Style has been Canada's fashion source. In continuing that tradition today, Style keeps its readers ahead of the competition.

Canadian Business Press (CBP) was established in 1920 and incorporated as a not-for-profit association in 1981 to represent the interests of the Canadian business, professional and farm press. It recognizes excellence in writing and graphic design through the annual Kenneth R. Wilson Awards program.

CIPA recognizes TELUS-Qualicom Innovations partnership in Retail Management

Toronto, Ontario – 1 November 2005: CIPA awarded TELUS Mobility a Silver Award of Excellence for its Retail Management System (RMS), an application designed and implemented by Qualicom Innovations. Qualicom also served as the primary consultant in integrating it with SAP and other systems.

TELUS Mobility, a leading supplier of wireless voice, data and Internet services to 4 million business and consumer clients, supporting 120 corporately-owned retail stores, planned a significant expansion by 2007.

This expansion would not have been possible if TELUS had not chosen to upgrade its previous retail software. Store managers and staff handled inventory and sales transitions in systems separate from head office. Therefore, the possibility for errors was huge, and head office lacked critical inventory level information for its stores. TELUS needed a powerful new retail management system to upgrade both its clients’ retail experience and its staff’s work environment.

The new system needed to re-engineer and automate all store processes, ensure ease of use, and deliver productivity through a single access point for store staff. It also needed to enable centralized inventory, product and promotion management, incorporate other business applications in the corporate store environment, and include a POS framework capable of plugging in Web applications to integrate various payment options.

Qualicom’s design integrated Web and Java technologies to deliver state-of-the-art functionality to the stores. The POS application was a single-transaction workflow combining sales and returns. Input came from scanning product codes, serial numbers or receipts; transactions could be suspended, resumed, voided or paid by a mix of different tender types.

It also enabled offline transactions so that client support could be provided without having to connect to the central server. And unlike many RMSs, which required extensive modifications to support new requirements, Qualicom’s solution permitted any application to interface with the RMS solution.

The end result met or exceeded all of TELUS’s expectations. Employee churn is down significantly and annual sales growth in the stores is in double digits, compared with an industry average of three per cent. Since its roll-out in October 2002, the RMS has become the gateway application that is used by the Corporate Stores team every day.

Qualicom joins IBM’s premier Rational SME program

Guelph, Ontario – May 2, 2005: Qualicom has officially joined the premier IBM Rational Subject Matter Expert program. As a Rational SME, Qualicom will provide clients with market-leading software and methodologies that will reduce client project risk and speed project ramp-up times, leading to faster development and deployment.

Qualicom chosen to develop and implement RUP Framework for OMAFRA/LRC

Toronto, Ontario – February 1, 2005: The Rational Unified Process® or RUP® product is a software engineering process. It provides a disciplined approach to assigning tasks and responsibilities within a development organization. Its goal is to ensure the production of high-quality software that meets the needs of its end users within a predictable schedule and budget. With the practical experience and expertise in using RUP for software development, Qualicom has been chosen to develop and implement a framework for Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) and the Land and Resources Cluster (LRC).

Ministry of the Environment selects Qualicom to develop requirements for and design WWIS II

Toronto, Ontario – January 24, 2005: Ontario’s Well Regulation 903 under the Ontario Water Resources Act (OWRA) sets rules for the construction, maintenance, pollution prevention, and abandonment of drilled wells. Under Regulation 903, a well record must be submitted to the Ministry when a well is constructed, abandoned, or altered. Anticipating an increase in the volume of work due to the revisions in this regulation, the Ministry of the Environment has selected Qualicom to develop a detailed requirements definition and logical design for the Water Well Information System II. The future system is expected to allow the electronic submission of well records, make data readily accessible for watershed-based source protection decision-making, and improve search and retrieval capabilities.

Qualicom chosen by MOE for ERS G3 project

Toronto, Ontario – January 4, 2004: The Environmental Registry System Generation 2 (ERS G2) was developed and implemented in 1998, providing a standard, easily-accessed data entry environment for prescribed Ministries, including the office of the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. The ERS G2 system has reached maturity. The Ministry believes that the ERS should be re-engineered to improve the level of services offered by taking advantage of next-generation design and technologies and by fully adopting the corporate standard portal technology environment known as the “environet”. After reviewing proposals submitted from numerous vendors, Qualicom was selected to design, develop, and implement the ERS G3.

BTI Canada selects Qualicom to implement Sabre® CentralCommand SM with Agresso

Guelph, Ontario – December 1, 2004: BTI Canada has chosen Qualicom to implement Sabre® CentralCommand SM with Agresso. This leading-edge application will enable BTI Canada to provide a fully integrated end-to-end business information system for its clients, perform multidimensional analysis of large volumes of data, access real-time data gathered from key areas of the business, and ensure the validity of information through pre-determined validation rules.

OMAFRA partners with Qualicom for the Nutrient Management Program

Toronto, Ontario – August 9, 2004: The Nutrient Management Act established a comprehensive framework of regulations for the management of materials containing nutrients used on land, including manure, commercial fertilizer, biosolids, and pulp and paper sludge. Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of the Environment have been directed to jointly develop and implement a strategy regarding the application of nutrient-rich materials to land. The ministries are proposing an integrated provincial data management system that will provide automated support in the form of a geo-referenced NM business information solution. The proposed system will integrate with a number of MOE and OMAFRA-related systems to monitor, audit, and report on all materials containing nutrients that are applied to agricultural land. Qualicom was chosen to design, construct, and implement the new system to meet to requirement of the legislation.

The Ministry of Finance selects Qualicom to re-engineers SBPS application

Toronto, Ontario – February 10, 2004: As part of an ongoing effort to build a tightly-integrated financial system with the Ministry’s Cube system, the Ministry of Finance has selected Qualicom to re-develop the Salary Benefits Projection System (SBPS) used to calculate and maintain salary and benefit cost projections across the Ministry. To conform to the Central Agencies Cluster’s technology standards, the new system will be developed and deployed using J2EE running on an IBM WebSphere Application Server. The benefits of the new system include providing a common application of HR business rules, centralizing financial controllership, improving financial administration efficiencies, and providing management with decision support capabilities.

Qualicom chosen to provide Web Services prototype

Toronto, Ontario – November 2003: The Management Board Secretariat (MBS) of the Ontario Government has selected Qualicom to develop and implement a Web Services prototype based on UDDI version 2.0 specifications. The project includes the creation of UDDI naming conventions for standardizing Web services information in the OPS internal UDDI registry. In addition, Qualicom will work with the MBS team to describe the UDDI Application Architecture and best practices for building secured Web services applications.

Qualicom exhibits at Showcase Ontario

Toronto, Ontario – September 8-10, 2003: Showcase Ontario is an annual forum that brings together the Ontario Public Sector and the IT industry in a series of seminars and workshops, plus a tradeshow. This year, Qualicom Innovations exhibited its creative IT solutions, from inception to deployment at the show.

In these demanding times, the Public Services sector is under pressure to increase efficiency while reducing costs. As an IT partner for the government, Qualicom has helped to meet these challenges by delivering rapid and measurable returns on investment. This year, Qualicom’s focus was on:

• A unique way to develop quality J2EE applications quickly
• QRUP: Qualicom’s adaptation of the Rational Unified Process
• Enterprise IT planning and business modelling

For more information on any of these areas, please contact us.

Qualicom presents at the Toronto Java Users Group

Toronto, Ontario – June 3, 2003: Qualicom's senior partner Richard Chan gave a presentation at the Toronto Java Users Group monthly meeting at the Ryerson Polytechnic University. Mr. Chan was the lead technical architect for the recent development of an IBM S390 mainframe J2EE application for a major financial institution. He shared the insights, challenges, benefits and lessons learned from the project. By deploying J2EE applications on their Mainframes, organizations using a Mainframe as part of their existing infrastructure will be able to leverage the high standards of service and performance in terms of availability, scalability, security and reliability associated with the Mainframe environment. To obtain details of the presentation, contact us.

Qualicom establishes Retail Systems Division

Toronto, Ontario – January 2, 2003: Qualicom, a software engineering, integration and consulting company, announced the establishment of its retail systems division. This new division is dedicated to serving North American retailers with its innovative retail management software, Retail-IT. The division will also provide a wide range of consulting and support services for clients running other retail systems.

The retail sector is one of Qualicom’s major markets. With its client list growing steadily, the company recognized the need to set up a division to serve this vertical market with Retail-IT and with a dedicated team for technical consulting and services support.

For more information about Retail-IT and retail technology consulting services, please contact Qualicom Retail Systems at 416.790.3000 from the GTA, or 1.800.830.3922 from North America.

Equifax and Zero Attrition to offer automated decisioning solution, developed in part by Qualicom

Toronto, Ontario – November 4, 2002 /CNW/: Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX), and Zero Attrition, a Customer Relationship Management solutions company, announced the launch of Advanced Decisioning(TM) an automated, customer decisioning solution, in Canada.

Advanced Decisioning is a dynamic web-based software application engineered to operate as an Application Service Provider (ASP), combining Equifax's consumer and commercial credit data with the user's internal information assets and decisioning policies.

Powered by Zero Attrition software, Advanced Decisioning analyzes the customer base; predicts risk, value and more; and then automatically derives decisions about customers both at the point of sale, and throughout the customer lifecycle.

"We're excited about adding this new product to our suite of sophisticated risk decisioning solutions," said Rick Cleary, President of Equifax Canada Inc. Advanced Decisioning will be of particular interest to our Canadian customers who need non-capital-intensive enhancements to their portfolio and risk management processes that don't create additional burdens on already scarce internal technology resources." Advanced Decisioning allows lenders to quickly, conveniently, and cost-effectively control the decisioning process by examining and defining a customer portfolio.

"We are proud to collaborate with Equifax to offer the Advanced Decisioning solution, which is also part of Zero Attrition’s Enterprise Solution Suite," says Allen Baron, Chief Executive Officer of Zero Attrition. "We hope to help companies improve their decisioning, development and implementation processes, and we purposely developed Zero Attrition software so that there is no decision you can't make - quickly, easily and without involving your IT department."

About Equifax Inc.

Equifax (NYSE:EFX) (www.equifax.com), a 103-year-old S&P 500 company, enables and secures global commerce through its information management, marketing services, direct to consumer, commercial and authentication businesses. As a leader in information technology, Equifax serves customers across a wide range of industries including the financial services, retail, healthcare, telecommunications/utilities, brokerage, insurance and government industries. Equifax also enlightens, enables and empowers consumers to manage and protect their financial health with services offered at www.equifax.com. The company ranked number five in return on equity among Business Week's Best Performers during 2001. Equifax employs 4,800 in 12 countries and has $1.1 billion in revenue.

About Zero Attrition

Zero Attrition is a leading edge provider of decision management software to customer focused companies in the telecommunications, financial services, utility, retail, e-commerce and government sectors. Zero Attrition empowers companies to manage one-to-one customer interactions in real-time through its suite of web enabled predictive, analytical, data transformation, segmentation, and decisioning tools. Zero Attrition software also combines data from publicly available repositories with customer application and behavioral information for use in the decisioning process. The company's applications enable corporations to improve customer acquisition strategies, reduce attrition, increase lifetime value, reduce financial risk, and lower operating expenses. Zero Attrition offers its flexible, user configurable software through an Application Service Provider (ASP) model on a transactional basis. For more information visit www.zeroattrition.com.

About Qualicom

Qualicom, a major shareholder of Zero Attrition, played an important role in the development of the Advanced Decisioning software. Qualicom is a software engineering, integration and consulting company that provides businesses with innovative and cost-effective solutions, enabling them to improve their operational efficiency and maximize their return on investment.

Ontario provincial government adds Qualicom to its Vendor of Record

Toronto, Ontario – October 29, 2002: Qualicom, a software engineering, integration and consulting company, signed a Vendor of Record agreement with the government of Ontario to provide information technology services for the provincial ministries.

Under the agreement, Qualicom will be engaged in IT consulting services required by various provincial ministries. The agreement demonstrates that the qualifications and experience of Qualicom consultants are recognized by the provincial government.

Qualicom has a team of highly skilled, experienced, and multi-disciplinary IT professionals dedicated to providing the highest level of service, and transforming leading edge technologies into practical solutions. They have developed and implemented large-scale solutions for some of the most prominent North American corporations in the financial, telecommunications, retail and health care industries.

Qualicom StoreManager showcased in Chicago

Following the success of their integrated retail management system in the Canadian market, Qualicom StoreManager (QSM), in the Canadian market, Qualicom showcased this retail solution to an international audience at Chicago Retail Systems 2002 in late June.

Qualicom pronounced one of Canada's Hottest Startups

Toronto, Ontario - August 27, 2001: Qualicom Innovations Inc., a rapidly growing software engineering, consulting and integration firm, has been ranked one of Canada's Hottest Startups by PROFIT, The Magazine for Canadian Entrepreneurs. This second annual award program highlights fast-growth companies ranked by revenue growth over two years: fiscal 2000 over fiscal 1998.

"Canada's Hottest Startups is the definitive list of this country's most dynamic new businesses and exciting entrepreneurs," says PROFIT publisher and editor Rick Spence. "As a group, these aggressive companies are pioneering new levels of innovation and customer service. They are focused on unique new niche markets and they're targeting the world."

By assisting businesses in the speedy development of IT solutions, Qualicom affords its clients the luxury of being able to focus more energy on their own core areas of competency. Qualicom has the people and the resources to keep up with the pace of today's changing technology, relieving its clients of this responsibility and expense. "We're the most cost-efficient way that an organization can expand its software development capacity," says Ed Wu, Qualicom's Director, Marketing and Sales.

"We're honoured to stand among Canada's fast-growth companies for 2001. It couldn't have been achieved without the team of experts who stand behind our name," continues Wu. "With their continued commitment, you'll hopefully be reading a lot more about us in the future." And the future looks bright for Qualicom. According to International Data Corporation, global spending on IT services will grow from $429 billion in 2001 to $700.3 billion by 2005.

About PROFIT, The Magazine for Canadian Entrepreneurs

PROFIT was founded in 1982 as Canada's first national magazine geared to owner-managers. PROFIT reaches more than 100,000 entrepreneurs across Canada, offering news, strategies, tips, and other resources targeting the information needs of small and medium-sized business - the most dynamic sector of the Canadian economy. For more information, visit www.profitguide.com/hottest.